The Challenge(7)
“You’re tired of being a responsible adult,” she accused him, “and you want to return to the boyhood you never had.” His parents had pushed him hard to achieve and so had she. “You want to be Tom Sawyer or Peter Pan. I don’t want to be Heidi or Tinker Bell or play Little House on the Prairie. We’re grown-ups for chrissake. We have a sophisticated, adult life I love, and Juliet has every advantage we can give her. I’m not going to take that away from her. All you think about is yourself. Try thinking about us for a change. You’re being completely irresponsible, Tom. You can’t just throw our whole life out the window because you need a change.”
“You could work from anywhere,” he reminded her, which was true. “You write freelance and you have a good agent.”
“I write about politics, the economy, the world on a fast track, important current events, heads of state. What would I write about from there? The beauty of a tree? The sunset on a mountain? That’s not what I do. Why can’t you take a sabbatical if you need a break, or see a therapist or take medication?” He said she completely disregarded what he felt and needed, which was true. She couldn’t understand what had happened to him, and she didn’t want to. They had irreconcilable differences to an extreme degree.
“If I went on sabbatical,” he said to her, “I’d be drowning again as soon as I came back. I hate my job and our life. I need to be true to myself. A therapist isn’t going to change that.” The sad fact was that, without noticing, they had drifted along the river of life going in opposite directions, and were shouting at each other from the distance. They could hear each other, but they were too far apart now to be able to reach each other, and neither of them wanted to change directions. She was thirty-eight years old and didn’t want to turn forty living in Montana, having given up everything she had fought hard for in New York. She believed in what she was doing, and the life she lived, as much as he believed what he was discovering about himself. Neither of them were wrong, but they were wrong for each other. The battles got more bitter for the next three months. The tension Tom was feeling spilled over into his work and he got into an equally bitter battle with the senior partner of the firm. It was about one of his clients’ investments, and how Tom was handling the account. Tom gave notice and left the firm two weeks later, which only made things worse between him and Beth. She accused him of creating the fight on purpose. A week later, they separated and he moved out, while Juliet watched in horror as their home life and her parents’ marriage unraveled. Tom moved into a bleak furnished apartment while he made his plans. And he left for Montana after Christmas, in January, and advised Beth that he had found the home of his dreams in Fishtail, Montana. She gave up on the marriage and the hope of his returning to sanity. She filed for divorce when he left and came to a temporary agreement with him about visitation.
He flew to New York every six weeks for a weekend to see Juliet, which was the best he could do for now. Beth agreed to let her stay with him for six weeks in the summer, and they would have to figure out more permanent visitation after that, in the fall. The hardest part was that he hadn’t moved to a city like Boston or Chicago, which was easy to get to. Juliet couldn’t easily fly to see her father for a weekend in Fishtail, Montana, and from what Beth could learn, the area was snowed in for half the year.
Juliet was bitterly unhappy about the arrangements, and blamed her mother for filing the divorce and not giving Tom a chance to work things out. She blamed both of them for playing tug-of-war with her, and she argued with her mother constantly about everything. She was relieved to get away from her, but still upset at her father when she arrived in Fishtail in July, with no idea what it would be like. She was still crushed that her parents were going to be divorced. Many of her friends’ parents were, but they lived across town from each other, not halfway across the country in a tiny town that was hard to get to.
Juliet was happy to see him when she arrived, and surprised to find that he had rented a pretty Victorian house and furnished most of it. He had become adept at ordering furniture and antiques from the internet, and had done a good job with the house, particularly with her big sunny bedroom, which had a four-poster bed he’d gotten on 1stDibs. He had wallpapered the room for her himself, and Beth had sent him a few of his things, and some paintings that he loved. She didn’t argue with him over their belongings, but she still couldn’t believe what he’d done. Their marriage had disintegrated in a matter of months.
Juliet could see that he was happy. The area was beautiful. He drove her up into the mountains, and they took hikes along the trails. Juliet was tall and athletic like her father. She enjoyed the outdoors more than her mother did. Although Beth had been a champion ski racer in college, and she had taught Juliet to ski when she was five. But everything Beth did was about competing and winning for money. Tom wanted more than that in his life. He wanted substance and real people and a job he enjoyed. Beth didn’t, and she called him irresponsible and juvenile.
Tom took Juliet fishing at a peaceful lake. They made dinner together at night, and later tried the few local restaurants in Fishtail and neighboring towns. It wasn’t New York, and she missed her friends, but it made her realize how much she missed living with her dad. She didn’t think his ideas were crazy. They made sense to her, but not to her mother. Juliet didn’t want to leave her friends in New York, but she didn’t want to leave her father either.